With our toy drives growing exponentially over the years, we are able to brighten the lives of thousands of ill children who are in the hospital during the holiday season.
Since 2016, our youth led, non-profit charity organization has led six successful toy drives resulting in delivering nearly 24,000 toys which were given to children at St. Michael Medical Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.
Our work is methodical and begins in September. Thanks to United Moving and Storage, our toy collection boxes from our toy drive last year were stored for us at no cost.
United Moving & Storage even donated two mini portables to Kidzz Helping Kidzz which allowed us to begin sorting through the boxes to determine the general condition of the boxes.
Some were in good condition from last year, some needed to be refurbished/rewrapped, and others needed to be recycled as they were very worn and used from last year.
The last two weekends, the youth from our Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board got together to begin to put together our new toy collection boxes.
Our first step was to wrap all of our toy collection boxes. Each year, we purchase the extra-large boxes at U-Haul and also buy new rolls of wrapping paper.
The boxes take two people to wrap them and this takes about 20 minutes. With the goal of having 100 toy collection boxes out in the community this fall, this is a big job!
Last weekend we spent over 5 hours wrapping toy collection boxes. This weekend we put posters and signs on the boxes. Although taping posters on the boxes is fairly easy, putting the signs on the boxes is a bit more complicated.
With the goal of creating “height” with the box to make it easier to read, we need to staple signs above the box. We use cardboard, wood and even a thick plastic material to make the sign stay up on the box and visible for anyone walking by.
Last year, we went through about five different heavy duty staplers in an attempt to put our signs up on our boxes. This year, we purchased two different staplers and neither worked well for attaching the wood to the boxes.
Given this, we did not finish making up all of our toy collection boxes. Next weekend, we hope to get them all completed.
Once the toy collection boxes are completed, they will be moved to our new warehouse which will become the new “Kidzz Helping Kidzz headquarters” this season.
We are grateful to St. Michael Medical Center for donating free warehouse space for us to do our important work.
If you know a local business, church or school that can support our toy drive this year by placing one of our toy collection boxes at their location, please let us know by calling (360) 536-7559 or by contacting us here.
Our toy drive is run entirely by volunteers. If you have a kid between the ages 10-17 (or are one yourself), and want to help us brighten the lives of at least 5,000 kids in the hospital this holiday season, just click the button below...
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